When the iPad first was announced I saw lots of chatter among assorted Adobe folks as well as other Community Professionals. As I understand it, Apple totally rejects Flash. Therefore the iPad doesn't support Flash. Captivate outputs to Flash ergo no Captivate (or anything that requires Flash) on the iPad.

For me, I see iPad as just another silly move on Apple's behalf to lock out the mainstream. They have traditionally prevented any cloning of components and have kept prices artificially high as a result. Which is why PCs dominated the marketplace. You can usually buy about four PCs for what you pay for a single Apple.

If --coming-- Flash 5 can convert to Apple's native format and if there's a smooth workflow integration between Captivate and Flash 5, --better yet, publish straight to Apple's format from within Captivate-- then Bob's your uncle.

We can agree or disagree with Apple's decision, but that's not the point. Mobile devices are the future, and we need to investigate ways to provide training on the iPhone/iPad/iPod Touch. If Adobe doesn't want to produce tools that can be used to create eLearning for those devices then someone else will.

Are there any plans for future versions of Captivate to publish to open standards, such as HTML 5?

While I do not dispute the fact that mobile devices are the future, I have to really pause and ponder just how effective eLearning really could be on something like a tiny telephone. I mean, really. You might have enough space for a button and a few words. People are constantly fighting the issue with Captivate that what they have to present to the end user must be captured at a size that really isn't suitable. Then they struggle with how to shrink it to fit the smaller area they have.

So I'm genuinely curious here. What type of applications would you foresee that would translate so well to a format such as iPhone? For the sake of argument, lets rule out that iPad is even a remote possiblity. Or even if it were, lets say that HTML 5 is suddenly the norm. How does the fact one can play a movie without Flash enter into the mix? How does one answer questions or interact in a simulation in any way? To my knowledge it simply provides an easy mechanism to present video. I've heard nothing about the interactivity that is also a constituent part of Flash related technology.

So do your best to try and sell me on the idea that tiny devices such as cellular telephones are the way to fly with eLearning.

You raise a good point about the small size, and I agree that it limits what we can do, but I am looking at it as inevitable. And of the course the iPad has much more screen resolution that the computer monitors we used for eLearning back in the 80s.

I am an eLearning professional and I am discouraged at the poor quality of much of the eLearning that I see, so the last thing I want is more poor quality. But consider the apps for the iPhone that exist now. Some are very good, and to the extent that they are useful so could eLearning, as long as it is built with the limitations in mind. I think you could have a lot more interactivity than I see in much of today's eLearning. I would not create instruction that is nothing more than a bunch of bullet points and boring content for any device. But as these devices become more the norm for many people we need to evaluate how to produce quality eLearning, and what tools are required to create that.

We probably need a whole new authoring tool for these devices that works better with the smaller screen size, and it won't publish to Flash. If a client buys iPhones or iPads for their employees and wants training to be delivered on them, what do we have to offer?

I did a conversion from Captivate to a static movie for the iphone a few years back. You can actually record it in real time with you clicking the interactions to make your interactive elearning into a more of a software DEMO VIDEO (I develop software training in Captivate) but you lose the interaction and you're right with size being a huge issue - you end up having to recreate the captions to be pretty huge. With the larger display iPadmight be worth a try if it gets widespread use.

For public-consumption, demonstration-only screencasts, that's not much of a big deal. Cp5 will export to the YouTube-friendly f4v format. YouTube will transcode that as Apple-friendly h.264 behind the scenes. For similar stuff that can't be put on YouTube, you can export from Captivate to AVI and use a converter like FFMPEG or Handbrake to convert to h.264.

Another option will be HTML5 and its Canvas element, emerging standards that Adobe's authoring tools will, I suspect, eventually support. There are already some experimental converters out there (e.g. http://smokescreen.us/) which will convert SWF to HTML5 + JavaScript. The HTML5 option would provide a lot more opportunities for interactivity. And I think that Adobe could totally own this space, as the creator of HTML5 development tools, if they chose to do so. But we'll see how that shakes out.

[I think Apple has some legitimate as well as some perfectly selfish and self-serving reasons for banning Flash from its devices. But I'll refrain from diving into that for now. I'm a fan of both Apple and Adobe, which makes me something of an odd bird of late.]

Practically speaking, this has been a non-issue for my own screencast delivery. The consumers of the screencasts I create consume them via desktop, laptop, and netbook machines. Many people in my organization have iPhones and iPod touch devices. And quite a few have Macs (especially at home, as I do). But, as yet, there's been no strong desire to access training content via those devices. As Rick noted, the form-factor itself is an issue. The iPad (and, as they emerge, other larger-format touch devices) will be a more viable platform for delivering screencasts, but I'm still not sure that the typical usecase for these devices will be to consume training content. If trainees come beating down my door demanding to watch my SharePoint and Excel how-to demos and simulations on their iPads, I'll find a way to target them. But, for now, it's not a concern.

If I may, I think the executive summary for the Captivate on Apple mobile devices issue is:

Apple has banned Flash from their mobile products (iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch), so you cannot use projects published directly from Captivate.

Apple has banned the ability to use Adobe Packager for iPhone to convert Adobe-generated content to an iPhone-native format (link), so no hope there.

Adobe has partnered with Greystripe to create a service for converting Flash to HTML 5 on the fly (link), but it's only just been announced and is intended to deliver interactive ads; there's no guarantee it will work for Captivate-published projects. It's also a hosted solution, so you'll be paying Greystripe a monthly fee for the service if it works for Captivate projects at all.

You can convert a published Captivate project to a video format (.avi, .m4v, etc.) but doing so means it's a view-only demo with no interactivity. This conversion must be done using a 3rd-party tool each time you republish your Captivate project.

The differing screen sizes of the iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch means you will likely end up targeting each published project to a specific screen size (iPad vs iPhone 3/iPad Touch vs iPhone 4) or settling for a lowest-common-denominator screen size (iPhone 3/iPod Touch).

The differing screen dimensions of the Apple mobile products makes reusing project resources very difficult; some content that looks great on iPad will be unreadable at smaller screen sizes (iPhone 3/ iPod Touch).

Basically, until Adobe forces Apple to open up the iOS through legal means or Adobe adds HTML 5 support to Captivate, the ability to use Captivate-generated content on Apple mobile devices is limited to publishing your projects and converting them as view-only videos.

I think your focus is in the wrong area here. First of all, Apple is not going to change course and include the Flash player in the iPad. Whether Captivate generates Flash or HTML 5 is incidental, Adobe can make that change, so the choice is up to Adobe right now.

The bigger question is whether Captivate is the right tool to develop for the iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch. I don't think it is. The interface for these devices is heavily dependent on touch, swiping, pinching etc., and unless Adobe makes some significant changes in interactivity in Captivate you could not create the kind of interactivity needed. Also, in much of what I have done in Captivate I make use of rollovers, which make no sense in the iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch environment. And as much as I try to avoid it, Captivate is unfortunately built on a linear model. While not alien to mobile devices (I have created podcasts, which are by necessity linear) a linear approach is an outdated and instructionally ineffective model.

So developing once and delivering everywhere makes no sense, since a PC-based training approach, on a larger screen, is just not the same as what a designer would want to do for these mobile devices. The computer/mouse paradigm is a 1980s era approach. These new devices need new thinking. That doesn't mean that Captivate could not be modified to deal with this, and that is actually something we need, since there does not seem to be any good authoring environment for these devices right now. So rather than arguing over Flash, Adobe should show some leadership and develop a great tool for creating native content for the iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch.

"Basically, until Adobe forces Apple to open up the iOS through legal means or Adobe adds HTML 5 support to Captivate, the ability to use Captivate-generated content on Apple mobile devices is limited to publishing your projects and converting them as view-only videos."

I don't know what Adobe's legal position would be, with respect to forcing Apple to do anything. Adobe is a software vendor. They don't control Apple's hardware. Adobe has convinced Google to include Flash and AIR in the Android 2.2 OS (http://www.riagora.com/2010/05/flash-air-and-google-android/). So it seems their hope right now is that Android will become the leading edge mobile platform.

Video covers a lot of ground. I like Captivate's ability to produce interactive content (simulations, especially). But a lot of training starts as demos. And plenty of it ends there. I use Aggregator to create the TOC that ties my SCOs together, but I could just as easily render them all as AVIs (and then transcode to M4V) and build a TOC in HTML. For the demo-only stuff, that would do just fine.

"The bigger question is whether Captivate is the right tool to develop for the iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch. I don't think it is."

It certainly isn't at the moment, though Adobe tried to move that direction with CS5, though that was more in terms of making it a technical possibility, not a way of embracing the platform's touch UI as such.

I love the iPhone/iPad interface. I've tinkered a bit with Xcode/Interface Builder/Objective-C, just to see if it's something I could tackle. At the same time, I also love Captivate. I'm learning as much ActionScript 3 as I can, since that allows me to extend Captivate now. I have a foot and an interest in both of these camps. I'm curious to see what happens. Maybe video is good enough for mobile learners. Or maybe Apple isn't interested in being a mobile learning platform. We'll see.

Apple’s recent announcement that it has lifted restrictions on its third-party developer guidelines has direct implications for the Packager for iPhone. The feature is available for developers to use today and we will now resume development work on this feature for future releases. This is great news for developers and we’re hearing from our developer community that new AIR applications for iOS devices are already being approved for the Apple App Store. We do want to point out that Apple’s restriction on Flash content running in the browser on iOS devices remains in place.

We recently got an iPad at work and I've been playing with it and Captivate 5. As others have accurately posted, it is possible to create a demonstration only and publish it as an .f4v file. I then used Adobe Media Encoder to convert that to an h.264 .mp4 file. The iPad will play this mp4 file using the Safari browser just fine. It looks and sounds great.

My concerns are that there is no interactivity at all. And no closed captioning nor TOC either.

Lol. I have painted myself into a corner. Any help would be appreciated...

I've developed some lessons for our customer... with much faith in Adobe's "Enable SWF for conversion to iPhone application", and knowing that flash can be packaged inside an iphone app, I presumed that captivate users were ready to launch into the ipad realm.

I'm trying to import my .swf into Flash CS5.5 to create the app, and it crashes Flash. Is there any reliable way to get my captivate .swf onto an ipad/iphone currently?

I own the Master Coll 5.5 and Captivate 5.5... importing .swf from captivate into flash crashes flash. Adobe support says that I need the elearning suite. On a personal note, that put me into a bit of a black rage about having to buy a new car because I need a cigarette lighter...

having calmed down, just thought I'd pass this tidbit along to would be iPad e-learning developers =)

I've been delving into the Instructional Design aspect for my job as a corporate trainer in coming up with new strategies for delivering our content to the marketplace, and the iPad is definitely on our radar. To that end, it's important to note that we are looking at the iPad in terms of how to build out an App that can co-exist with the main SOS in a normal browser environment.

It's not the most streamlined of operations, especially when you consider all that's required:

1. Apple Enterprise ID to both create and publish apps in your own enterprise (lots of dollars)

2. Captivate 5 licensing or higher

3. Major command line interaction from the SWF file to the IPA

4. You'd also likely have to have several IOS devices (think iPad, iPad2, iPad3, iPhone 3, iPhone 4, iPhone 4s, iPod Touch with multiple configurations on each) in order to perform the needed QA

ROI on the capital, time, and manhours to develop even just a single iPad app that mimics a regular Captivate session? Probably very minimal at present...once this margin increases either by decreased cost for enterprise enrollment (unlikely), simpler transition from SWF to IPA (possible), and better consistency between IOS devices (also unlikely)...

My guess is the R&D team at Adobe is aware of the barriers and are already working on easing that transition...as it can be done, just a matter of streamlining it for better ease of use and to increase the ROI for businesses.

You are correct that Adobe is well aware the workflow you saw would be a powerful disincentive to any corporation looking to develop adn deliver iPad-based training content.

To avoid going through the Apple store, you need to deliver your content purely from a browser URL, which means it needs to be HTML5.

Adobe showed a prototype tool some months ago that converted very basic Captivate 5.5 projects to HTML5. I stress that it was only a prototype, so it's functionality was extremely limited compared to what serious e-learning developers would require.

You are also correct that this need to output content for normal desktop OS as well as mobile platforms is VERY much on Adobe' radar. In a short time you (and the rest of the world) will see their answer. (Can't say anything more...)

Not sure I agree with the statement "To avoid going through the Apple store, you need to deliver your content purely from a browser URL, which means it needs to be HTML5."

You have to pay to dance, but in essence, companies can set up their own equivalent of an Apple Store that their content is pushed through. So, while it's still a money-maker for Apple (because those Enterprise licensing options for iPad development are not very cheap - ETA: I just checked, and its cheaper than I thought - $300/yr: https://developer.apple.com/programs/ios/enterprise/)), the HTML5 option is not a exclusive option for educational training and development for organizations. I know of several that are considering exactly this from Angel investment just because the long term profits would far and away justify the cost of setting up the distribution system on the front end.

For individual educators and trainers though - forget it...HTML5 would be the only way to go - and we know that even going this route is arduous as unilateral browser adoption of this standard is still something of a pipe dream, although the potential for it is growing more likely - it's not a current solution that is available for most.

The question is - what do we as educators do in the interim? My answer, I'm afraid, is this command line option. I am willing to bet though that some smart individual will develop an application, whether Windows, Mac, or Ipad based that can run the heavy lifting for conversion for you. The only limiting factor as I see it for this is the ability to publish to an ipad

I agree that HTML5 is still very much a pipe dream for delivery of most learning given the current browser compatibility issues we face.

My previous comments about the Apple store were intended in the context of corporate training, as you said you were a "corporate trainer". I work exclusively for corporate clients, and I don't know any of them that would willingly want to go through the Apple store just to deliver their corporate courses. Any that are even talking about one day delivering their courseware via mobile devices are ALL looking at HTML5 from an INTERNAL web server as their delivery mechanism. They would all much rather keep their stuff inside their firewall.

As far as what we content developers can use to deliver training in the meantime, I think events over the next few months are going to make that question a lot easier to answer.

Agreed...and I should probably clarify...while I do work for a corporate organization, the content we are creating is delivered to K-12 schools mostly, so not sure where fall in my training/educational experience. Suffice to say, 6 months ago I didn't know what SCORM stood for, and the acronym ADDIE was also completely foreign to me. Having spent most of my life as a Helpdesk Tech and Sysadmin, have only recently returned to an educational role (used to be on track for a post graduate degree when a hottie I was dating - now my wife, sidetracked me from said endeavors. Always wanted to get back to teaching on some level and only recently have had the opportunity to do so.

The content they are producing at my company is mostly cheesy Powerpoint handouts - the training staff is starting to take our own initiative in getting more useful mechanisms rolled out that are more useful. Hopefully the company will see the writing on the wall and realize that interactive is the way of the future! :-)

In my view the best way to deliver courses on an iPad is through a dedicated app. If you look at Articulate Storyline they have created an iPad app that will allow you to run courses created with storyline. The courses are accessed online and you can view them through the app. You can also "download for later viewing" which is a great option.

HTML5 is... well HTML5 and it will take a long time (if ever) before there will be a consistent way of delivering HTML5 content to users and ensuring that the course will play as intended on the plethora of different browsers.

It is possible to play flash content on iPads (I'm 99% sure that is what Articulate is doing with their app) with a third-party app such as the "Puffin" browser for example. Therefore my personal choice would be to create my courses in Captivate as an SWF and then have an App on my iPad that would allow me to play these courses that I could access from my corporate intranet or similar.

The dates on these posts always shows up strangely, so I'm not sure how old the last one is. It shows 2008 for me, but that's not right.

Using Captivate's HTML5 output with Icenium Mist, it is now simple to run Captivate content on the iPad. However, there are several performance issues (e.g. slow button response, videos have no navigation, videos load in upper left corner and then jump to location). I am not certain if the project that I am working on will be approved by Apple.

I'm wondering if writing this in HTML5 code would be a better way to go since I may be able to access some of the more graphic/performance friendly functionality.

4 years on from the original date of this topic and this debate is still on going, even if it has deviated slightly from movies.

Having read through this post it is interesting see the different views and opinions. I would put forward that IPAD or Android tablet compatible courses are the way forward.

I agree with the points mentioned about tablet screens being too small but unfortuantely due to customer demand I find myself being forced to develop courses that are compatible with tablets. Has anyone come across a way to make captivates advanced functions tablet comptible or upgrade previous course for IPAD compatibility? I thought my prayers would be answered with Captivate 7, my research is ongoing but I have yet to yield any conclusive results. the moment I figure a few more things out I will happily share my results.

I don't think I would change anything I stated in 2010, other than to say that being able to create eLearning for the tablet is even more important that we said then.

I also need to reiterate somethingI said then, that the iPad (at 1024 x 768) has more resolution that computer monitors did in the 80s, and I developed a lot of eLearning in the 80s.

Of course not everything will work on tablets, but I just created a demo (so no interactivity) for a client in Captivate, and I thought it would work well on the iPad. I published in HTML 5 and it looked really good. A few things didn't work right, so I am not going to show it to them, but if these bugs were worked out it would be a very nice option.

I am creating eLearning for a hospital, and physicians and nurses would like to be able to get JIT focused training on the new electronic charting, ordering and record-keeping software they will be using. Grabbing an iPad and watching a 2-minute demo of how to do something would be preferable to finding a desktop computer and doing the same.